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Successful scheming in House of the Dragon requires having several backup plans—and when it comes to real-life dragons, it’s no different.
As part of its global campaign for House of the Dragon, HBO and Max put a 270-foot installation of Vhagar—the biggest dragon in the show—on top of the Empire State Building just ahead of the series’ Season 2 premiere on June 16.
“It was the first time anything like that had been done before at that scope and scale,” Pia Barlow, evp of originals marketing at HBO and Max, told ADWEEK. “That was super exciting and also very nerve-racking.”
According to Barlow, the Empire State Building was onboard after a proposal alongside agency Giant Spoon: “In the initial meetings, it was said, ‘This is fucking crazy, but I love your ambition. You figure out how to do it. We’re game.'”
To pull it off, HBO and Max enlisted “tons of experts, specialists and engineers,” according to Barlow. The dragon was fabricated by Bigger Than Life Advertising, whose president, Mark Bachman, was a manager on the Empire State Building’s famous 1983 King Kong installation.
Of course, not everything went to plan.
“You should have seen some of the war rooms. Like, ‘Hey, what’s the weather report today?'” Barlow said. “I know so much about low-pressure and high-pressure systems.”
House of the Dragon’s Season 2 campaign is all about fans choosing their sides, either the black banners for Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) or green banners for King Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), with landmarks around the world going to one side or the other. And according to Barlow, the original plan was to have Vhagar go up on the building the weekend before the premiere when cast members were visiting the Empire State Building and lighting it green to claim it for King Aegon.
That didn’t happen.
A waiting game (of thrones)
Barlow said the installation, which took months to plan, was put on pause by a low-pressure system that made it too windy and difficult to get Vhagar on the building in time for the cast. After all, the inflatable, which was made of 1,700 total patterns, 600,000 inches of sewn seams and weighed around 1,500 lbs., required 153 rigging points, and safety was the first priority.
“The beginning of the week, we’re like, ‘OK, this is not good weather,'” Barlow said. “But the forecast said there’s a high-pressure system coming.”
It was a waiting game. Barlow called it a “day by day” situation.
Then, on the Thursday night before the premiere, the team made the call to go ahead with the plan.
“We’re like, ‘Is it time? It’s time,'” Barlow explained.
Vhagar is coming
Work started Friday at midnight, and the 10- to 12-hour job had to be split into two parts due to weather. It continued on Saturday.
“At one point, it looked like just an inflatable up there with a tarp, like work was being done,” Barlow said.
The timing worked out. A week after the Greens and King Aegon claimed the Empire State Building, Vhagar arrived on the day of the Season 2 premiere.
“There were a lot of pins and needles around it,” Barlow said. “But it was truly epic.”
Along with the dragon, HBO gave fans a royal welcome. The building was illuminated green for Aegon, an Iron Throne gave visitors photo opportunities, and attendees were the first to experience Zynga’s Game of Thrones: Legends game, which was available for pre-registration.
According to HBO, the event was a success.
In addition to a bevy of news stories about the installation and social impressions, the company said 100,000 people went through the experience at the Empire State Building. It was live for 10 days and saw an average of 10,000 to 20,000 people per day.
Barlow called the installation the “capstone” of House of the Dragon’s Season 2 campaign.
“When you think about a 270-foot, true-to-size, physical replica of the largest dragon in the show, you have to really wow people,” Barlow said, adding, “It was a first for many of us—and I’ve been doing this for quite some time—but that was truly special.”
This piece has been updated to note that the Vhagar installation was split into two parts due to weather.
